On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't • Hacker News Board

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#611

Post by lostcolony » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

leetcrew wrote: post #568

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is a lie. The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, and house everyone. We've chose to build a system that does not. Perhaps you find that defensible, perhaps you find that appalling, but argue that position, not one that isn't true.

> The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, and house everyone. this is kind of reductive claim. in one sense, it's trivially true that the earth has more raw resources than humans can consume even over the course of centuries. AFAIK it's also true that, under the current system of organization, the global economy produces enough finished goods to feed, clothe, and house everyone (though people often bring up l…

Just like how that increase in marginal tax rate prevents anyone from climbing into the upper tax brackets (and why we never had millionaires back when the top bracket was > 90%), eh?

Of course people can keep the surplus. Some of it. But we're a far, far cry from the point where people will stop working when only getting a percentage of their labor's worth (or their parent's labor's worth, as is often the case).

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#612

Post by EvilEy3 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:52 PM UTC

scsilver wrote: post #244

YinglingLight wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that luck plays a huge role The concept of Talent Stacking: https://personalexcellence.co/blog/talent-stack/ Those who accrue and leverage a variety of skills tend to get 'lucky'. This is why you could strip most entrepreneurs of all their money and assets, and not be surprised to see them enjoying success in 5 years. You put into place a system that makes making the right decisions inevitable, and lea…

Remove them from their network and see what happens.

Why not go further? Remove their arm, leg, eye. Put them at most disadvantage. See if they can succeed!

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#613

Post by nindalf » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:53 PM UTC

dahfizz wrote: post #459

whack wrote: post #377

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I made it and you can too. Poverty has no color. It impacts everyone. You can't tell just by looking at someone. I love your story. There's also a ton of people who will delight in cherry-picking your story, as justification for not expanding the social safety net. "throwaway-0987 did it, and you can too! You just need to stop being so lazy" A few factors to consider: - You had an aunt you could live with - As a yo…

3 of the 5 factors you list boil down to "OP made good decisions and worked hard". I'm not sure how that is a counter argument to "throwaway-0987 did it, and you can too! You just need to stop being so lazy". From their description, it doesn't sound like living with his Aunt was a tremendous boon either. I don't mean to argue against a social safety net (free college in this example was certainly a good thing). I jus…

> 3 of the 5 factors you list boil down to "OP made good decisions and worked hard"

One of those "decisions" was avoiding prison. OP says people call him privileged, so he probably didn't belong to a race that is jailed disproportionately for crimes that white people are let off for.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#614

Post by criticaljudge » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:54 PM UTC

whimsicalism wrote: post #517

criticaljudge wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think people quickly tire of it when they have to take care of those lazy people directly. I'm not saying nothing should be done. Just that it is a fallacy to think the government simply has infinite money to spend.

Probably also a fallacy that it would take infinite amounts of money to alleviate poverty (:

Since people can multiply, infinite amounts is a possible scenario. Also scarcity - think of "a kingdom for a horse". If there are 1000 apples and 1001 people, and everybody who doesn't get an apple starves to death, the 1001th apple would be worth an infinite amount of money to the 1001th person at least, or to the person who wants to save them by all means.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#615

Post by throwaway284239 » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:55 PM UTC

vmception wrote: post #571

throwaway284239 wrote: post #564

Boy, does the stuff about cars hit home. When I was poor I had to drive on tires so old that the steel was exposed. The worst was when my insurance got canceled because I couldn't afford it. This led to a chain reaction of absolute dumpster-fire awfulness: - Can't afford insurance - Insurance gets canceled - This automatically triggers registration getting canceled - I can't stop going to work, and there's no public…

> because (as I learned that day) not having insurance is a criminal offense > Can't afford the ticket I got for not being registered so here is where you got lucky, not having prior outstanding non-payment or not having prior potentially or actual criminal offenses on your record. non-payment of the ticket would have led to harsher punishment upon your next infraction, which is much more likely to happen when your n…

I know you didn't mean it this way but I would not describe any part of this experience as "lucky."

But you're right. The patrolman came right out and said that he was knocking down the no-insurance charge to an unregistered citation because I didn't have a criminal record. What he didn't know is that I do have a criminal record, just not in that state. Guess his systems don't connect to the federal ones.

So yeah. "Lucky" is right.

What galls me about this is that if you look at any of the individual steps in isolation, it sounds perfectly logical, or at least there's an argument to be had. And that's the level at which we argue about these things when it comes to passing laws.

But when you look at the whole thing end-to-end, it is crystal-clear that there is a sum greater than its parts, and that sum functions to drive people who are in poverty even further into poverty. In this particular case there's the additional unintended consequence of prioritizing the flow of money over actual vehicle safety.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#616

Post by carapace » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:56 PM UTC

Good luck can cover for bad decision making, but good decision making can't cover bad luck. You can mitigate but Murphy will have his due.

- - - -

> That’s the drop-off you experience at the lower price levels - there’s nothing between “This is a tiny but acceptable apartment” and “Slum apartments in stab-ville”.

This is more-or-less by design. It's what keeps people from "going native". (Literally, at least in the USA. We wouldn't even let the natives go native! Made them put their kids in our schools, wear our clothes, style their hair our way, and speak only our language. It was pretty fucked up. The open secret is that whites who got kidnapped by Indians and lived among them for a while tended to like it.[1] As in, they refused to go back to town or the farm. I'm not trying to say that the Native lifestyles and cultures didn't have problems, I'm saying that they had fewer problems than the European newcomers. For example: no homelessness. It wasn't until after the Europeans arrived that a man or woman in North America could become destitute.)

The give-away is the objection, "But who will pick up the garbage?", when one brings up the idea of a post-scarcity Utopia.

If there wasn't the specter of homelessness, we couldn't get anyone to haul our trash for us. That's the unstated assumption behind that objection. It's pretty ugly: "We need a lower class that can be kept in line with the threat of homelessness, vagrancy, and prison to supply cheap labor to do the things we don't want to do ourselves."

The obvious solution, don't have trash in the first place, doesn't get air time.

(But think it through: there is no such thing as trash or waste in Nature. The very concept of "trash" is human mental construction. There are plastics that biodegrade... etc.)

[1] "An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States", Dunbar-Ortiz https://www.zinnedproject.org/materials/indigenous-peoples-h...

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#617

Post by criticaljudge » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:57 PM UTC

35fbe7d3d5b9 wrote: post #515

dahfizz wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For some definition of "deserving", I would agree. Certainly, everyone should have the tools and opportunities they need to build the life they want. Society has limited resources. Until we manage the post-scarcity utopia, I would prefer my tax dollars go to someone who will use them to build a better life.

This is a lie. The world has enough resources to feed, clothe, and house everyone. We've chose to build a system that does not. Perhaps you find that defensible, perhaps you find that appalling, but argue that position, not one that isn't true.

Sustainable resources? Food production relies heavily on fossil fuels, for example. But I suspect the same people who make that claim you make also make the claim that it would be easy to solve the climate crisis, we'd just have to act more sensibly.

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#618

Post by [deleted] » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

andromeduck wrote: post #432

vorpalhex wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I didn't have it as hard as the parent, but I remember choosing between bus fare and meals quite a few times. My first paycheck was spent on white bread and a tube of sausage, and now I live a pretty comfortable life. Most everyone in my orbit has improved their situation too. Sometimes that was with help from a family member, but generally things have gotten better for friends who were in the same circumstances I wa…

This is my experience too - almost everyone who hung out with me in the library, computer lab or metal shop seemed to do fairly well for themselves - not like 200k tech job well but like 80k blue collar or white collar when most of us grew up with less than 40k combined household income. Half of us first or second generation immigrants and refugees, lots of broken families, lots of substance abuse, lots from Romania,…

[deleted]

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#619

Post by dahfizz » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

thebradbain wrote: post #577

dahfizz wrote: post #563

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lots of people wake up and never evaluate their life at all. People win the lottery and end up homeless with a drug addiction. If millions of dollars can't help them, do you think the government should keep writing those people checks?

This is a strawman argument, because this is in no way representative of the many people who live in poverty, but I’ll address it because it doesn’t change my final opinion: Yes, because obviously what someone who won (and lost) millions of dollars needs is not money, but help and support. Not to mention, by the construction of your own strawman, if they’ve won such a jackpot they’ve probably also then paid millions…

I don't see how this is a strawman. My argument is an existence proof. There exists people who cannot be lifted out of poverty by giving them money. I can trivially prove my claim by giving examples of such people[1]. I never claimed that all or most people are like this. But its undeniable that some people are simply irresponsible / lazy.

[1] https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2016/08/15/5-million-lotto-...

Re: On the Experience of Being Poor-Ish, for People Who Aren't

#620

Post by nomel » Mon, Mar 01, 2021, 7:59 PM UTC

krmmalik wrote: post #272

throwaway-0987 wrote: post #174

Throwaway because I don't want my co-workers to know. I was poor. My father left home when I was a kid in middle school. My mom worked part time cleaning houses and left us when she found a new husband. I dropped out of high-school in the 9th grade and went to work. Low paying jobs. I lived with my aunt on the bad side of town. Fast-forward 35 years. Today, I make about 200K per year. I got a GED, went to trade schoo…

Have you considered trauma release (there are many different ways you can do this) in order to get over your fear of being poor? From the way you're speaking (for want of a better phrase), it sounds like the poverty experience traumatised you, and you're re-living your trauma each day.

I can relate very closely with grandparent. For me, I don't consider it "traumatizing" as much as "moderating" from a very clear perspective of how well I have it now, how rare that actually is, and how much ridiculous excess most people are comfortable with.